Westboro Baptist Church known for military funeral protests to picket in Flint

FLINT, Michigan — They became known as “the circus of hate” after picketing the funerals of military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan with signs such as “Thank God for dead soldiers.”

And fundamentalist Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church — whose protests in 2006 at the funerals of fallen soldiers from Flushing Township and Byron enraged many — is making a return visit today.

Except, this time, they come to support something they like.

The group will picket at Kettering University during the Global Issues Film Festival screening of “The Anatomy of Hate; A Dialogue for Hope” — a documentary by a Flint native who spent weeks studying the church for the film.

Local filmmaker Michael Ramsdell followed the church in 2005 before members began protesting at military funerals. He spent time in the Kansas home of a church leader and filmed them during a couple of protests, including one at a high school showing The Laramie Project — a play about the 1998 murder of University of Wyoming gay student Matthew Shepard.

The church group — which believes that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality — makes up about a quarter of the film.

“I just resigned myself to the fact that they still think I’m going to burn in hell because I don’t agree with them,” said Ramsdell, 36, of Brighton. “But other than that, they were very polite and agreeable to being filmed. It was not a venomous relationship.

“It wasn’t about making any judgments. I really just wanted to understand them.”

His film explores the ideologies of the White Supremacist movement, Christian fundamentalism as an anti-gay platform, Muslim extremism, the Palestinian Intifada, Israeli settlers and soldiers, and US Armed Forces in Iraq.

Ramsdell expects the group to hold its controversial signs while picketing and is using the opportunity as a platform to spread their message.

“We do not oppose that documentary — we love that documentary,” one of the Kansas church’s leaders Shirley Phelps-Roper wrote in an e-mail to the Journal. “We see it as a preaching tool. We are most thankful for it.”

The film, which won “Best Political Documentary” at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival in 2009, starts at 7 p.m. today at Kettering’s McKinnon Theater in the campus academic building. A discussion of the film led by Ramsdell will follow.

Kettering officials said they would give as little attention to the protesters as possible.